"Occupy" movement... a 21st Century "Hooverville" ?

[cbelt3]

While observing coverage on the growing 'Occupy' movement and remarking that the participants appear to be the typical collection of anarchist style leftist-inspired youth, I began to wonder.

Are we looking at less of a 'student uprising' and more of an unemployed youth movement ? Many of the uprisings all over the world in the last few years (France, UK, Arab Spring, etc..) can be in part attributed to the creation of an underclass of perpetually unemployed youth.

Are these encampments the youth movement Hoovervilles of our century ?

[Acer]

Well, youth unemployment has been a problem building in the middle east for generations.

But in America, as recently as 2007, effectively everybody was employed.

Kinda presumptuous for Americans to identify with the suffering behind Arab Spring so soon.

[Seacrest]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7297093.stm

[$tevie]

Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.

Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to “take the jobs away from people working in this city,” a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals.

And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters “let their freak flags fly,” and are “aligned with Lenin.”

The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/opinio...crats.html

[Seacrest]

What's interesting to note re $tevie's post above, is that I have seen and heard quite a few RON Paul supporters at the Occupy movements (this is not going to be on your cable news shows), so it's kind of ironic that his son would say something so boneheaded.

I do wish the #OWS participants had better "optics," however, and that more "real Americans" would show up (or be shown on TV more).

Many of the issues they bring up should really resonate with Americans of all political stripes. A lot of their grievances are the same as the Tea Parties: stagnant wages, taxes we pay that go for bailouts and bonuses instead of more productive uses, limited opportunity for those not born with silver spoons in their mouths.

But, as usual from establishment figures, it's the old "divide-and-conquer" strategy. You'll notice a good number of high-profile Dems condemning/dismissing the movement as well.

[$tevie]

Seacrest wrote: Many of the issues they bring up should really resonate with Americans of all political stripes. A lot of their grievances are the same as the Tea Parties: stagnant wages, taxes we pay that go for bailouts and bonuses instead of more productive uses, limited opportunity for those not born with silver spoons in their mouths.

(tu)

Seacrest wrote: But, as usual from establishment figures, it's the old "divide-and-conquer" strategy. You'll notice a good number of high-profile Dems condemning/dismissing the movement as well.

(tu)

[Black]

Seacrest wrote:
Many of the issues they bring up should really resonate with Americans of all political stripes. A lot of their grievances are the same as the Tea Parties: stagnant wages, taxes we pay that go for bailouts and bonuses instead of more productive uses, limited opportunity for those not born with silver spoons in their mouths.

Fundamental difference-- the Tea Party is against concentration of power in the government; Occupy Wall Street is against the concentration of power in the financial sector. They are actually very much at odds, considering the Tea Party seems to be largely financed by that concentration of economic power.

[$tevie]

I'm not sure that I am seeing a lot of difference between "government" and the "financial sector" at this point. The financial sector pretty much tells government what to do, as evidenced by Congress' aching need to keep taxes low for the top 1%.

[$tevie]

What OWES doesn’t have—and is under some pressure, internal and external, to formulate—is a traditional agenda: a list of “demands,” a set of legislative recommendations, a five-point program. For many of its participants, this lack is an essential part of the attraction. They’re making it up on the fly. They don’t really know where it will take them, and they like it that way. Occupy Wall Street is a political project, but it is equally a cri de coeur, an exercise in constructive group dynamics, a release from isolation, resignation, and futility. The process, not the platform, is the point. Anyway, OWES is not the Brookings Institution. But its implicit grievances are plain enough: the mass pain of mass unemployment, underemployment, and economic insecurity; the corrupting, pervasive political influence of big money; the outrageous, rapidly growing inequality of wealth and income; the impunity of the financial-industry scammers whose greed and fraud precipitated the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; a broken political system hobbled by a Republican right willing and usually able to block any measures, however timid and partial, that might relieve the suffering. If Occupy Wall Street can continue to behave with nonviolent restraint, if it can avoid hijack by a flaky fringe, if it can shake the center-left out of its funk, if it can embolden Democratic politicians (very much including President Obama, who, lately and belatedly, has begun to show signs of fight), then preoccupied Main Street will truly owe OWES. Big ifs all. It’s too early to tell, but not too late to hope.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/20..._hertzberg

[Ted King]

Seacrest wrote:
What's interesting to note re $tevie's post above, is that I have seen and heard quite a few RON Paul supporters at the Occupy movements (this is not going to be on your cable news shows), so it's kind of ironic that his son would say something so boneheaded.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126324071300124959.html

Wall Street Journal, JANUARY 12, 2010 (snippet)

Indeed, anger over Wall Street bailouts was in many ways the spark that brought the tea-party movement to life. Joseph Farah, publisher of WorldNetDaily, a Web site popular among tea-party adherents, said the financial-industry rescue plan launched in the closing days of President George W. Bush's term "got this ball rolling. That's where the anger, where the frustration took root.

Since then, he notes, the movement has gone off in multiple different directions, and anger has mostly focused instead at Democrats running Washington. Yet there's a long history of populist ire being directed at Wall Street and Washington simultaneously.

Since Jan. of 2010 when this article was written, many in the Tea Party movement seem to have all but forgotten that a fair amount of the initial impetus for the movement came from the Wall Street bailout. I remember being told here in this forum and reading elsewhere that the Tea Party movement wasn't about social issues, too. Somewhere along the line, though, the Tea Party movement in general seems to have lost interest in Wall Street wrongs and focused that attention on social issues. I don't know of any direct evidence that the movement was manipulated in that direction, but it certainly seems plausible. But maybe it was just a natural drift that was bound to happen without any manipulation.

Though most Tea Partiers seem to have forgotten about the populist anger at the Wall Street bailout that helped get the movement started, I'm sure there are still quite a few Tea Partiers that still feel strongly about it, so it's not surprising to me that some of them would join the Occupy Wall Street protest.